A Seafarer’s Trifle

The man from Pest-O-Kill had shown me the video of the cockroaches on his phone. They were marching across my neighbours’ kitchen worktops and climbing up and down the rigging of their Venetian blinds. He said my house should be treated in case the little buggers tried to jump ship. I gave him fifty pounds and let him go about secreting sweet sticky traps around unsuspecting corners of the house.

It occurred to me that the beetle I had befriended at my desk might actually be one of them. I thought of the orange segments I’d offered her as she moseyed along top of my books. I’d seen her in the bathroom too, walking the perimeter, and given her a jolly salute. 

I’d never spoken to the couple next door beyond a bin-wheeling “hulloo!” but living so closely packed in our terraced row, I’d hear their unguarded private voices through the wall. A few months ago I had gleaned that she was pregnant. I’d heard his gruff disgruntlement and her plaintive muffled replies. When he went off to work, she would put on high-energy popular music and there would come a fast metrical thumping which I took for dancing. If I pressed myself against the wall I could feel in my flesh the vibration of her body and the music—I let it permeate and flow through my layers as I pictured her there—dancing like no one was listening.

After a while, it had become clear the baby wasn’t coming. I wondered if this was a tragedy or a blessing, of great importance or just one of those things. No more permeating music at any rate.

The sticky traps had remained empty except for the one in the alcove of the spare room. There I’d found the stricken body of my former invertebrate friend, prostrate in a layer of residual gloop. I’d squinted up close, considered launching her, in her sticky makeshift coffin, into the fast-flowing river at the park, or having her extracted and mounted under glass.

Feeling unexpectedly bereft, I decided to make a new companion, to do just one small thing and see what rippled outwards. I went to the shops. I bought custard and cream and sherry and sponge fingers and raspberries and strawberries and tinned mandarins and a shaky-tub of chocolate flakes. I would assemble them in the beautiful cutglass serving bowl I had cunningly stuck on the wedding list all those years ago, and managed to keep hold of, so all the glorious layers would be on view. 

That night, I dreamt the cockroaches had worked my house free from the end of the row of terraces and the woman from next door jumped aboard, her dark ponytail swinging decisively, proclaiming our lives were richer without the encumbrance of husbands and babies, and she and I and our shiny-shelled crew of beasties sailed down the hill, through the city, and away. We took biscuits and cream and lots of fruit to keep scurvy at bay. 

She froze when she saw me through her kitchen window. She stood with her hands thrust into the pouch of her oversized hooded top, like a Victorian lady with a muff. Then she came and timidly opened the back door. The kitchen was only a little dishevelled and smelled pleasingly of citrusy cleaning fluid.

I was unsure what to say. I had gone easy with the shaky chocolate flakes because I didn’t want to remind her of the former infestation. I wanted to say this is just a small and modest gesture of friendship and solidarity. I wanted to say I’m not saying you must climb aboard my house and escape down the hill with me and our crew of marvellous matey roaches, but we can see how things go. I went with the simplest of all of the things I wanted to say.

“A trifle,” I said, holding up the bowl so she could admire the layers.